The Night Sky November 2012

Compiled by Ian Morison

A great month to view Jupiter and the Leonid meteor shower.

This page, updated monthly, will let you know some of the things that you can look out for in the night sky. It lists the phases of the Moon, where you will see the naked-eye planets and describes some of the prominent constellations in the night sky during the month.

Image of the Month

This image by the Hubble Space telescope is the deepest image of the far Universe ever taken in visible light. The faintest galaxies formed 13 billion years ago, just a few percent of its present age.

Highlights of the Month

November - a great month to view Jupiter!

Jupiter imaged by Damian Peach
Image: Stellarium/IM

This is the first of three great months to observe Jupiter. It now lies in Taurus and so is high in the ecliptic and hence, when due south, at an elevation of ~60 degrees. It is looking somewhat different than in the last few years as the north equatorial belt has become quite broad. The Great Red Spot is currently a pale shade of pink but can be easily seen as a large feature in the South Equatorial Belt. An imaging opportunity occurs at the end of November when a complete rotation can be observed at an elevation of greater than 20 degrees and against a dark sky. Jupiter is at opposition on the 3rd of December.

The image by Damian Peach taken with a 14 inch telescope in Barbados where the seeing can be particularly good. This image won the "Astronomy Photographer of the Year" competition in 2011.

November: Look for the Great Red Spot on Jupiter

This list gives some of the best evening times during November to observe the Great Red Spot which should then lie on the central meridian of the planet.

2nd 20:52 21st 21:29

4th 22:30 23rd 23:07

7th 19:59 26th 20:36

9th 21:37 28th 22:14

14th 20:44 29th 18:05

16th 22:22 30th 23:52

19th 19:51

Around the 13th November - Find M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy - and perhaps M33 in Triangulum

How to find M31
Image: Stellarium/IM

In the evening, the galaxy M31 in Andromeda is visible in the south The chart provides two ways of finding it:

1) Find the square of Pegasus. Start at the top left star of the square - Alpha Andromedae - and move two stars to the left and up a bit. Then turn 90 degrees to the right, move up to one reasonably bright star and continue a similar distance in the same direction. You should easily spot M31 with binoculars and, if there is a dark sky, you can even see it with your unaided eye. The photons that are falling on your retina left Andromeda well over two million years ago!

2) You can also find M31 by following the "arrow" made by the three rightmost bright stars of Cassiopeia down to the lower right as shown on the chart.

Around new Moon (13th Nov) you may also be able to spot M33, the third largest galaxy after M31 and our own galaxy in our Local Group of galaxies. It is a face on spiral and its surface brightness is pretty low so a dark, transparent sky will be needed to spot it using binoculars (8x40 or, preferably, 10x50). Follow the two stars back from M31 and continue in the same direction sweeping slowly as you go. It looks like a piece of tissue paper stuck on the sky just a bit brighter than the sky background. Good Hunting!

November 16th after sunset: Mars below a crescent Moon

Mars below a crescent Moon
Image: Stellarium/IM

After sunset on the 16th, the planet Mars will be seen below a thin crescent moon in the south-western sky.

November 10-15th: Search for Neptune - with no Moon in the sky.

Neptune near closest approach
Image: Stellarium/IM

Neptune, with a magnitude of 7.8 should be easily seen in binoculars under a dark, early evening, sky. It will be due south around 18:30 in the evening. Neptune lies about 2 degrees above the star Iota Aquarii as shown on the chart. Iota Aquarii can be found by moving 5 degrees to the left and slightly upwards from the star Delta Capricorni.

November 16th/17th - late evening : The Leonid Meteor Shower

A Leonid crossing the Sword of Orion

Every year, on the nights of November 16th and 17th, the Earth passed close to the trails of cometry debris from Comet Temple-Tuttle which produce the annual Leonid Meteor shower. The wonderful image shows one of the 2001 Leonids burning up in the atmosphere as it crossed the constellation of Orion. Happily, this year, the meteor shower is just a few days after new Moon, so its light will not hinder our view. The best time to observe them will be after midnight as our hemisphere is facing the stream of cometary debris. The dust particles that are swept up by the Earth are released as Comet Temple-Tuttle rounds the Sun every 33 years. As implied by the name, the radiant of the shower - from where the meteors appear to radiate from - lies within the head or Sickle of the constellation Leo the Lion.

November 27th Dawn: Venus and Saturn come together

Venus and Saturn together in Virgo
Image: Stellarium/IM

Before dawn on the 27th Venus will lie in Virgo (close to boundary with Libra), just 0.8 degrees to the lower right of Saturn. A nice grouping. They differ in brightness by 4.6 magnitudes, so that Venus will be almost 100 times brighter than Saturn!

November 28th after sunset: Jupiter and a full Moon

Venus and Saturn together in Virgo
Image: Stellarium/IM

After sunset on the 28th, Jupiter will be rising close to a Moon that was full just a few hours earlier.

November 30th at dawn: Mercury near greatest elongation

Mercury, Venus and Saturn
Image: Stellarium/IM

Before dawn on the 30th, Saturn, Venus and Mercury will be lined up in the eastern sky. Mercury will be close to its greatest elongation from the Sun and, with a magnitude of -0.2, will be best seen for some months.

Learn the Mare on the Moon.

Mare on the Moon
Image:Ian Morison

Why not use the annotated image of the full Moon to learn the locations of the Moon's Mare. You can see some of them with your unaided eye and binoculars will enable you to spot them all.

NGC 891 imaged with the Faulkes Telescope

Edge-on galaxy NGC 891
Image: Danial Duggan Faulkes Telescope North.

Planetary Nebula M82, imaged by Daniel Duggan. This image was taken using the Faulkes Telescope North by Daniel Duggan - for some time a member of the Faulkes telescope team. NGC 891 is an edge-on spiral lying in the constellation Andromeda at a distance of 27 million light years. We think that this is very much as our own galaxy might look when seen edge-on.

Observe the International Space Station

The International Space Station and Jules Verne passing behind the Lovell Telescope on April 1st 2008.
Image by Andrew Greenwood

Use the link below to find when the space station will be visible in the next few days. In general, the space station can be seen either in the hour or so before dawn or the hour or so after sunset - this is because it is dark and yet the Sun is not too far below the horizon so that it can light up the space station. As the orbit only just gets up the the latitude of the UK it will usually be seen to the south, and is only visible for a minute or so at each sighting. Note that as it is in low-earth orbit the sighting details vary quite considerably across the UK. The NASA website linked to below gives details for several cities in the UK. (Across the world too for foreign visitors to this web page.)

Note: I observed the ISS three times recently and was amazed as to how bright it has become.

The Moon

The Moon at 3rd Quarter. Image, by Ian Morison, taken with a 150mm Maksutov-Newtonian and Canon G7.Just below the crator Plato seen near the top of the image is the mountain "Mons Piton". It casts a long shadow across the maria from which one can calculate its height - about 6800ft or 2250m.

A World Record Lunar Image

The 9 day old Moon.

To mark International Year of Astronomy, a team of British astronomers have made the largest lunar image in history and gained a place in the Guinness Book of Records! The whole image comprises 87.4 megapixels with a Moon diameter of 9550 pixels. This allows details as small as 1km across to be discerned! The superb quality of the image is shown by the detail below of Plato and the Alpine Valley. Craterlets are seen on the floor of Plato and the rille along the centre of the Alpine valley is clearly visible. The image quality is staggering! The team of Damian Peach, Pete lawrence, Dave Tyler, Bruce Kingsley, Nick Smith, Nick Howes, Trevor Little, David Mason, Mark and Lee Irvine with technical support from Ninian Boyle captured the video sequences from which 288 individual mozaic panes were produced. These were then stitched together to form the lunar image.

Plato and the Alpine Valley.

Please follow the link to the Lunar World Record website and it would be really great if you could donate to Sir Patrick Moore's chosen charity to either download a full resolution image or purchase a print.

The Planets

A montage of the Solar System. JPL / Nasa

Jupiter

A Cassini image of Jupiter . Nasa

Jupiter rises around 8 pm at the beginning of November and during twilight by month's end. It will then be seen all night rising to some 60 degrees above the horizon in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. Shining at magnitude -2.7 it starts November lying just ~7 degrees to the upper left of the star Aldebaran, the eye of the Bull. Jupiter is moving westwards in the sky in retrograde motion and will do so until the beginning of February 2013, so whilst its magnitude increases to -2.8 it will end the month slightly closer to Aldebaran (5 degrees) as it moves above the Hyades cluster. Over the month its angular diameter increases from 47 to 48.4 arc seconds so even a small telescope will show plenty of detail with the bright zones and darker bands crossing the disk and up to four Gallilean moons visible.

See highlights above.

Saturn

The planet Saturn. Cassini - Nasa

Saturn passed behind the Sun on the 25th of October so, as the month begins, will be just 6 degrees away and lost in the Sun's glare. But, during the month, its separation from the Sun increases to 32 degrees and so, by month's end it will rise 3 hours before sunrise and will be visible above the eastern horizon. In the first couple of weeks binoculars will probably be needed to spot the magnitude +0.7 planet low above the horizon - but do not use them after the Sun has risen! By mid month it will be easier to spot and - the good news - the rings have now opened out to 18 degrees from the line of sight and will be at their best for 6 years! We are now observing the southern hemisphere whilst much of the northern hemisphere will be hidden by the rings. With a small scope one should now be able to spot Cassini's Division within the rings if the "seeing" is good, but we will have to wait a month or so for Saturn to rise higher into the pre-dawn sky for really good views.

See highlight above.

Mercury

Messenger image of Mercury Nasa

Mercury, passes in front of the Sun (inferior conjunction) on November 17th so will not be visible until towards the end of the month when it may be spotted well down to the lower left of Saturn and Venus. Its magnitude rises from +3.2 on the 21st to -0.3 on the 30th. At month's end, its 44% illuminated disk will be 7.6 arc seconds across.

See highlight above.

Mars

Mars, moving eastwards from Ophiuchus into Sagittarius on the 27th, is visible low in the west after sunset whilst its rapid eastwards motion through the heavens keeps it visible throughout the month. It starts the month in Ophiucus shining at magnitude +1.2. This remains constant during the month whilst its angular diameter falls from 4.6 to 4.4 arc seconds so it is very unlikly that any surface marking could be seen on its salmon-pink disk. On the 1st of the month, its elevation is will be about 10 degrees in the southwest as darkness falls one hour after sunset and this remains much the same throughout the month.

See highlight above.

Venus

Venus showing some cloud structure

Venus. rises about 3 hours before the Sun this month and, with a magnitude close to -4 dominates the pre-dawn sky. As dawn breaks it will start the month at an elevation of ~25 degrees, but this will drop to ~17 degrees by month's end. During November, its angular size drops from 13.3 to 11.8 arc seconds but, at the same time, the percentage illumination increases from 81 to 88% so the brightness hardly changes - from -4.0 to -3.9 magnitudes.

The Stars

The Evening November Sky

The November Sky in the south - early evening

This map shows the constellations seen towards the south in early evening. To the south in early evening moving over to the west as the night progresses is the beautiful region of the Milky Way containing both Cygnus and Lyra. Below is Aquilla. The three bright stars Deneb (in Cygnus), Vega (in Lyra) and Altair (in Aquila) make up the "Summer Triangle". East of Cygnus is the great square of Pegasus - adjacent to Andromeda in which lies M31, the Andromeda Nebula. To the north lies "w" shaped Cassiopeia and Perseus. The constellation Taurus, with its two lovely clusters, the Hyades and Pleiades is rising in the east during the late evening.

The constellations Lyra and Cygnus

Lyra and Cygnus

This month the constellations Lyra and Cygnus are seen almost overhead as darkness falls with their bright stars Vega, in Lyra, and Deneb, in Cygnus, making up the "summer triangle" of bright stars with Altair in the constellation Aquila below. (see sky chart above)

Lyra

Lyra is dominated by its brightest star Vega, the fifth brightest star in the sky. It is a blue-white star having a magnitude of 0.03, and lies 26 light years away. It weighs three times more than the Sun and is about 50 times brighter. It is thus burning up its nuclear fuel at a greater rate than the Sun and so will shine for a correspondingly shorter time. Vega is much younger than the Sun, perhaps only a few hundred million years old, and is surrounded by a cold,dark disc of dust in which an embryonic solar system is being formed!

There is a lovely double star called Epsilon Lyrae up and to the left of Vega. A pair of binoculars will show them up easily - you might even see them both with your unaided eye. In fact a telescope, provided the atmosphere is calm, shows that each of the two stars that you can see is a double star as well so it is called the double double!

Epsilon Lyra - The Double Double

Between Beta and Gamma Lyra lies a beautiful object called the Ring Nebula. It is the 57th object in the Messier Catalogue and so is also called M57. Such objects are called planetary nebulae as in a telescope they show a disc, rather like a planet. But in fact they are the remnants of stars, similar to our Sun, that have come to the end of their life and have blown off a shell of dust and gas around them. The Ring Nebula looks like a greenish smoke ring in a small telescope, but is not as impressive as it is shown in photographs in which you can also see the faint central "white dwarf" star which is the core of the original star which has collapsed down to about the size of the Earth. Still very hot this shines with a blue-white colour, but is cooling down and will eventually become dark and invisible - a "black dwarf"! Do click on the image below to see the large version - its wonderful!

M57 - the Ring Nebula
Image: Hubble Space telescope

M56 is an 8th magnitude Globular Cluster visible in binoculars roughly half way between Albireo (the head of the Swan) and Gamma Lyrae. It is 33,000 light years away and has a diameter of about 60 light years. It was first seen by Charles Messier in 1779 and became the 56th entry into his catalogue.

M56 - Globular Cluster

Cygnus

Cygnus, the Swan, is sometimes called the "Northern Cross" as it has a distinctive cross shape, but we normally think of it as a flying Swan. Deneb,the arabic word for "tail", is a 1.3 magnitude star which marks the tail of the swan. It is nearly 2000 light years away and appears so bright only because it gives out around 80,000 times as much light as our Sun. In fact if Deneb where as close as the brightest star in the northern sky, Sirius, it would appear as brilliant as the half moon and the sky would never be really dark when it was above the horizon!

The star, Albireo, which marks the head of the Swan is much fainter, but a beautiful sight in a small telescope. This shows that Albireo is made of two stars, amber and blue-green, which provide a wonderful colour contrast. With magnitudes 3.1 and 5.1 they are regarded as the most beautiful double star that can be seen in the sky.

Alberio: Diagram showing the colours and relative brightnesses

Cygnus lies along the line of the Milky Way, the disk of our own Galaxy, and provides a wealth of stars and clusters to observe. Just to the left of the line joining Deneb and Sadr, the star at the centre of the outstretched wings, you may, under very clear dark skys, see a region which is darker than the surroundings. This is called the Cygnus Rift and is caused by the obscuration of light from distant stars by a lane of dust in our local spiral arm. the dust comes from elements such as carbon which have been built up in stars and ejected into space in explosions that give rise to objects such as the planetary nebula M57 described above.

There is a beautiful region of nebulosity up and to the left of Deneb which is visible with binoculars in a very dark and clear sky. Photographs show an outline that looks like North America - hence its name the North America Nebula. Just to its right is a less bright region that looks like a Pelican, with a long beak and dark eye, so not surprisingly this is called the Pelican Nebula. The photograph below shows them well.

The North American Nebula

Brocchi's Cluster An easy object to spot with binoculars in Gygnus is "Brocchi's Cluster", often called "The Coathanger",although it appears upside down in the sky! Follow down the neck of the swan to the star Albireo, then sweep down and to its lower left. You should easily spot it against the dark dust lane behind.

Brocchi's Cluster - The Coathanger

The constellations Pegasus and Andromeda

Pegasus and Andromeda

Pegasus

The Square of Pegasus is in the south during the evening and forms the body of the winged horse. The square is marked by 4 stars of 2nd and 3rd magnitude, with the top left hand one actually forming part of the constellation Andromeda. The sides of the square are almost 15 degrees across, about the width of a clentched fist, but it contains few stars visibe to the naked eye. If you can see 5 then you know that the sky is both dark and transparent! Three stars drop down to the right of the bottom right hand corner of the square marked by Alpha Pegasi, Markab. A brighter star Epsilon Pegasi is then a little up to the right, at 2nd magnitude the brightest star in this part of the sky. A little further up and to the right is the Globular Cluster M15. It is just too faint to be seen with the naked eye, but binoculars show it clearly as a fuzzy patch of light just to the right of a 6th magnitude star.

Andromeda

The stars of Andromeda arc up and to the left of the top left star of the square, Sirra or Alpha Andromedae. The most dramatic object in this constellation is M31, the Andromeda Nebula. It is a great spiral galaxy, similar to, but somewhat larger than, our galaxy and lies about 2.5 million light years from us. It can be seen with the naked eye as a faint elliptical glow as long as the sky is reasonably clear and dark. Move up and to the left two stars from Sirra, these are Pi amd Mu Andromedae. Then move your view through a rightangle to the right of Mu by about one field of view of a pair of binoculars and you should be able to see it easily. M31 contains about twice as many stars as our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and together they are the two largest members of our own Local Group of about 3 dozen galaxies.

M31 - The Andromeda Nebula

M33 in Triangulum

If, using something like 8 by 40 binoculars, you have seen M31 as described above, it might well be worth searching for M33 in Triangulum. Triangulum is

the small faint constellation just below Andromeda. Start on M31, drop down to Mu Andromedae and keep on going in the same direction by the same distance as you have moved from M31 to Mu Andromedae. Under excellent seeing conditions (ie., very dark and clear skies) you should be able to see what looks like a little piece of tissue paper stuck on the sky or a faint cloud. It appears to have uniform brightness and shows no structure. The shape is irregular in outline - by no means oval in shape and covers an area about twice the size of the Moon. It is said that it is just visible to the unaided eye, so it the most distant object in the Universe that the eye can see. The distance is now thought to be 3.0 Million light years - just greater than that of M31.

M33 in triangulum - David Malin

The constellation Taurus

Taurus

Taurus is one of the most beautiful constellations and you can almost imagine the Bull charging down to the left towards Orion. His face is delineated by the "V" shaped cluster of stars called the Hyades, his eye is the red giant star Aldebaran and the tips of his horns are shown by the stars beta and zeta Tauri. Although alpha Tauri, Aldebaran, appears to lie amongst the stars of the Hyades cluster it is, in fact, less than half their distance lying 68 light years away from us. It is around 40 times the diameter of our Sun and 100 times as bright.

To the upper right of Taurus lies the open cluster, M45, the Pleiades. Often called the Seven Sisters, it is one of the brightest and closest open clusters. The Pleiades cluster lies at a distance of 400 light years and contains over 3000 stars. The cluster, which is about 13 light years across, is moving towards the star Betelgeuse in Orion. Surrounding the brightest stars are seen blue reflection nebulae caused by reflected light from many small carbon grains. These relfection nebulae look blue as the dust grains scatter blue light more efficiently than red. The grains form part of a molecular cloud through which the cluster is currently passing. (Or, to be more precise, did 400 years ago!)

VLT image of the Crab Nebula

Close to the tip of the left hand horn lies the Crab Nebula, also called M1 as it is the first entry of Charles Messier's catalogue of nebulous objects. Lying 6500 light years from the Sun, it is the remains of a giant star that was seen to explode as a supernova in the year 1056. It may just be glimpsed with binoculars on a very clear dark night and a telescope will show it as a misty blur of light.

Lord Rosse's drawing of M1

Its name "The Crab Nebula" was given to it by the Third Earl of Rosse who observed it with the 72 inch reflector at Birr Castle in County Offaly in central Ireland. As shown in the drawing above, it appeared to him rather lile a spider crab. The 72 inch was the world's largest telelescope for many years. At the heart of the Crab Nebula is a neutron star, the result of the collapse of the original star's core. Although only around 20 km in diameter it weighs more than our Sun and is spinning 30 times a second. Its rotating magnetic field generate beams of light and radio waves which sweep across the sky. As a result, a radio telescope will pick up very regular pulses of radiation and the object is thus also known a Pulsar. Its pulses are monitored each day at Jodrell Bank with a 13m radio telescope.